In the distant continent of Orentha, beyond the glassy dunes of Vael’Kar and the sunken cities of the Reath Seas, there lay a forest untouched by age and rot — the Emerald Holt of Nur’Vael. The trees there wept tears of silver every dusk, drops that shimmered like stars caught in water. The elves claimed they were remnants of forgotten gods, mourning the loss of magic in the world. The scholars said the tears were the product of sap reacting with minerals in the mist. But to Elira, an orphan of the Holt, the trees wept for her.
Elira was born under the Hollow Tree, the largest and oldest weeping tree at the heart of the forest. She had no mother, no name until the druids found her cradled in a knot of its roots, crying beside a silver tear the size of her infant body. They raised her in the green sanctum, feeding her with forest fruits and knowledge. Unlike the other druids, she could speak to the trees — not in riddles and metaphor like her elders, but in language clear as speech.
When she asked the Hollow Tree why it cried, it answered only once: “Because I remember.”
At sixteen, Elira no longer needed guidance. Her hair flowed like dark vines, her skin carried the luster of dew, and her presence quieted even the loudest crows. Yet, she remained haunted by the dreams — a silver throne in a realm of nothingness, shadows clawing at the edges, a voice whispering her name backwards: A-r-i-l-e.
One dusk, as the tears began to fall and the forest hummed its melancholy tune, Elira heard a sound the Holt had not known for centuries — metal on stone. She followed it, weaving between glowing trunks and whispering leaves, until she found a man with an iron blade.
He was wounded, his armor scorched and melting in parts. Something dark, pulsing and red, clawed beneath his flesh. When Elira approached, he growled like a cornered beast.
“Stay back,” he warned, his voice splintering. “I carry the Mark.”
Elira saw it then — a sigil of nine-pointed thorns etched into his chest. It bled smoke. The trees recoiled.
“Who did this?” she asked, kneeling.
“The Fade… it’s returning. I saw its edge breach the world. The Veil is thinning.”
The Fade — the formless realm beyond death and thought. A place sealed long ago by the Sacrifice of the Verdant Court. It was myth, old even in the druids’ scrolls. And yet, this man had seen it.
Elira called the Hollow Tree, and for the first time in her life, it did not answer.
The man’s name was Cael. In his lucid moments, he spoke of his order — the Keepers of the Veil, hidden warriors who guarded the boundary between realms. He was the last.
“The throne calls to you,” he said. “You are the Bloom, the heir of memory. Only you can enter.”
Elira scoffed, but that night she dreamed again — the throne, the voice, and this time, a mirror. In it, she saw her face fracture, revealing vines and stars beneath her skin.
The Hollow Tree spoke again the next day: “You must remember.”
Beneath its roots was a stair she had never noticed. Elira descended, leaving the green behind. The tunnel wound downward for hours, until moss turned to marble and air to breathless cold.
She emerged into a hidden chamber — a circular room with nine pedestals, each bearing a mask: the Falcon, the Thorn, the Hollow, the Flame, the Mirror, the Crown, the Wound, the Chain, and the Bloom.
When Elira touched the Bloom, memories not her own crashed into her. She saw herself as a queen, seated on the silver throne in a realm of pure life, surrounded by nine guardians. The Fade had once broken through before, and the court had given up their forms to seal it — but one had been reborn.
Her.
The Bloom was not a title. It was a cycle. Each millennium, it returned, taking form in a child born of magic and grief.
Elira staggered back, mask in hand. Her blood sang.
When she returned to the Holt, Cael was gone. Only ash remained where he lay — and a single message scorched into the earth:
“The Fade rises through the Hollow Gate. Nur’Vael must bloom or die.”
Elira wore the mask.
She traveled beyond the Holt for the first time in her life, through the ruins of Elven bastions and across the dead rivers of Vael’Kar. The Fade was already creeping — whispers in the wind, shadows without sources, people who slept and never woke.
At the Hollow Gate, where the barrier between worlds had once been thick as steel, now stood only mist. From it emerged creatures with no shape — memories given hunger. They swarmed villages, devoured thoughts, left behind husks.
Elira confronted them, her mask glowing with inner life. Where they touched her, they sizzled and fled. She realized then: she was not of this world entirely. She had been made to return, to remember, to bind.
But she was alone.
Until the other masks began to stir.
The Mask of Flame was found in a mountain tomb, worn by a blind man named Korr who spat fire when angry. The Crown was discovered by a madwoman in a ruined palace, who claimed to remember every past life. Slowly, Elira gathered them — eight remnants of the Verdant Court, reborn in mortal guise, each pulled by the Bloom’s awakening.
Together, they faced the Fade at the Hollow Gate. But the shadows had learned. They spoke now, in voices of lost loved ones. They knew their prey.
“You are not real,” the Fade told Elira. “You are a story the trees made up to comfort themselves.”
“Perhaps,” she answered. “But stories remember.”
They fought — not with blades, but with memory. Each guardian called upon their ancient truths. The Flame recalled the First Fire, the Mirror shattered illusions, the Chain bound the formless. And Elira, with the Bloom, sang the Song of Becoming — a melody older than light.
As the Fade screamed, the Hollow Gate cracked. Beyond it, Elira saw the silver throne.
“I must go,” she told the others. “But not to sit. To seal.”
They begged her not to. But she smiled.
“I was born from tears. It is time I gave them back.”
Elira entered the Fade. The gate closed behind her.
In the Holt, the Hollow Tree stopped weeping. For the first time in an age, its roots grew new buds.
Elira’s name was written in the leaves, and every dusk, the forest sang her memory.
And somewhere, far beyond the veil, a throne sat empty — waiting for the Bloom to return again, when the world forgets.
